Stan Heath Quotes — Tennessee State

BY ANDRES FOCIL

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Arkansas plays host to Tennessee State Thursday at 7:05 p.m. in a game televised by ARSN. The Razorbacks are 6-1 but have not played since the 62-52 victory at Missouri on Dec. 7. Tennessee State is 4-4 with losses at Vanderbilt and in overtime at Western Kentucky. Following is a partial transcript of head coach Stan Heath’s press conference.

“We had a good practice today. We had a lot of energy and pretty good focus all the way through.

“I saw some good things out of Marcus Monk. He’s long, athletic and can help us.

“Our defense is still our strength, but our offense is picking up.

“Tennessee State has three guys on their team that transferred from bigger programs. (Rod) Flowers (16.5 ppg, 9.9 rpg) is from Cincinnati, (Bruce) Price (14.5 ppg) is from Georgia and Arnold (10.4 ppg) is from St. John’s.

“They will show us a lot of different things. It’s important for our guards to know what they are doing and to attack. It will be interesting to see how we respond.

“Steven, Darian and Charles will all be on Flowers but we will start out with Steven. They are athletic. They have those guys that were sitting out last year so they are still adjusting. They’ve played a lot of road games. Hopefully they don’t have a comfort level on the road yet.

“I want our team to just play the game. I don’t want them to play the jerseys, the scoreboard or for the fans. I want us to execute and play the game. If we do that, the end result will take care of itself.”

Ronnie Brewer:

“You can tell he is growing. From the freshman to sophomore year, there’s a big difference. The big thing with him is he can score only 10 points a game and still have a major impact.”

Jonathon Modica:

“He had a terrific day today. He’s focused on winning. He’s happy so I’m happy.”

Surprises this year:

“I always believed we could be a good defensive team, but I didn’t think we would pick it up so quickly. Last year, if we shot well from the outside, we felt good about ourselves. This year, if we play good defense, get our hands up and knock balls away, we feel good about ourselves. We can do that all the time.”